The World in Brief

The World in Brief

Egyptian attack toll

reaches 22 troops

CAIRO -- The death toll from a brazen attack on a border post in Egypt's western desert along the border with Libya has risen to 22 troops, including three officers, the military said Sunday.

The attack on Saturday was deadliest suffered by Egypt's military in recent history. President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, the country's former military chief, called the assault a terrorist attack and said it would not go unpunished. He also declared a three-day mourning period.

Military spokesman Brig. Gen. Mohammed Samir posted the names of the dead on his official Facebook page.

Gunmen armed with rocket-propelled grenades attacked the border post in the country's largest province al-Wadi al-Gedid, which straddles the Libyan and Sudanese borders, before sundown Saturday, causing an explosion in the ammunition warehouse. Three attackers were killed in brief clashes.

In a statement Sunday, a Muslim Brotherhood-led coalition condemned the attack on the border post and accused the military of failing to stop such attacks because it is engaged in politics.

Bosnians bury 283

from '92 war grave

KOZARAC, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Bosnian families on Sunday buried the remains of 283 Muslims and one Roman Catholic Croat who were killed at the start of the Bosnian war of 1992-95.

The bodies were laid out in green coffins in a sports field in Kozarac, where thousands prayed for them before burial in graveyards in the area.

Enisa Duratovic-Hegic, who buried her parents and eight other family members, said she hoped what happened to her and her family "never happens to anyone ever."

She said she prays to God to "punish the perpetrators if they evade justice on earth."

The victims were killed in the summer of 1992, when Serb troops went from house to house in the area of Prijedor in northwest Bosnia and killed any non-Serbs they found. They hid the bodies in mass graves, some of which have only been discovered recently.

About 10,000 Bosnians remain missing from the war.

The victims buried Sunday were identified through DNA analysis after they were found recently in Tomasica, one of the biggest mass graves in Bosnia. It contained some 400 bodies.

Rape that sparked

violence said false

RANGOON, Burma -- The alleged rape of a Buddhist woman by two Muslim men that triggered religious violence in the central Burma city of Mandalay was fabricated, authorities said Sunday.

A Home Ministry announcement published in the Myanma Ahlin newspaper said a third Muslim man had sought to frame the two owners of a tea shop because he blamed them for his being charged earlier with the rape of one of his female employees.

Rumors that the tea shop owners had raped one of their employees set off attacks on Muslims and mayhem over several days that left one Buddhist and one Muslim man dead, 14 other people injured and property damaged.

A nighttime curfew was imposed, and 49 people were charged with murder, grievous hurt, arson and disrupting public order, while a few hundred others received warnings for breaking curfew-related regulations.

The Home Ministry's report said the woman who filed the rape complaint with police and claimed to have been employed by the tea shop owners confessed that she was promised $1,000 and carefully coached to make her rape claim. It did not identify her religion, and said she never had worked at the tea shop.

Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports

A Section on 07/21/2014

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